30.10.–22.11.2026, Galleria G

In the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, the remains of ancient forests are preserved within geological formations. Their organic matter has been transformed and petrifed by sedimentation, pressure and time. What was once living tissue has become evidence of a vanished world. The forest might not be there anymore, yet its presence remains inscribed in stone, awaiting someone capable of reading its traces.

Moulding, casting, rubbing and printing… Traces transferred from one surface to another. Fossil as an imprint, a surface whose skin can be peeled away, a negative space carrying the potential of multiplicity. This gesture is not only the attempt to retrieve something from a distant past, but also an act of inquiry: to touch a surface is to encounter what it holds, to acknowledge its existence through the encounter of two separate bodies.

A fingerprint, the residue of sweat or grease, the pressure of hands closing around an empty space. These, too, are traces of contact, but of an encounter in which the body seems to turn towards itself. The hands attempt to grasp and preserve something that cannot be entirely held or possessed. What is being sought is not merely the preservation of matter, but of an experience: the capacity to touch and to be touched. Yet what, or whom, are these hands reaching for? Can the space between them be captured? Can touch itself be fossilised?

The exhibition moves between two temporalities: the immense duration of geological transformation and the almost imperceptible instant of bodily contact. Through impressions, casts and material residues, it attempts to give permanence to what is essentially transient. To fossilise is to preserve the remains of something no longer living, yet here it becomes an attempt to retain something of what makes us alive: touch.

Humans search the Earth’s strata for clues about vanished worlds, reconstructing histories from what has survived. Yet we, too, belong to that history. The matter composing our bodies is not foreign to the matter of forests, oceans or stones. Our bodies are neither outside geological time nor separate from the processes that continuously shape the world.

In an age when communication seems to bring us ever closer, while physical and emotional distance increasingly defines our relationships, the gesture of holding an empty space between one’s own hands acquires another significance. Is it an attempt to hold on to ourselves, or a longing to reach beyond our own boundaries?

Inma Herrera, born in Madrid in 1986 and rooted in Andalusian heritage, is a visual artist, printmaker, bodyworker, and educator living and working between in Helsinki since 2024. Her work has received the Ducat Prize (2020), the Pilar Juncosa & Sotheby’s Biennial Award for Artistic Creation (2019), with Shirin Salehi), and residencies at the Royal Academy of Spain in Rome (2017/2018) and ARTICA Svalbard (2022 and 2024). Recent solo exhibitions include A Simple Gesture (F2 Gallery, Madrid, 2025) and When We Thought the Sky Was Made of Stone (Sculptor Gallery, Helsinki, 2024), alongside international group exhibitions. Selected group exhibitions include Soil & Water (Nirox, Krugersdorp, ZA, 2025), Subterranean (Amos Rex, Helsinki, 2022), and Processi 145 (Royal Academy of Spain in Rome, 2018).

Through installations that bridge printmaking, sculpture, video, and performance, Herrera explores the alchemy and material transformation of image-making processes. Her practice engages with matter through the elemental forces of Earth, Water, Wind, and Fire, studying the concept of imprint where the human body becomes a medium, a vessel, and a catalyst. Her practise unfolds connections between materiality, embodiment, and transformation, often drawing from references to the history of printmaking and alchemy, geology, psychology and somatic practices.

This exhibition has been supported by the Arts Promotion Centre Finland.